You returned from holiday in late August 2010. Your children (now 17, 15 and 13) were looking forward to a new school year. You had everything – a nice home in a nice town, a good job, a wife who cared, confident and vibrant children, and extended family and friends who provided an anchor of stability. The pillars of a contented life stood proud and firm.

Yet you returned from that holiday having made up your mind to leave your wife.

You loved your children and you thought that if you rented a flat nearby, in the same town, that they would be able to see you regularly.

You thought you could continue to support them and be a close father as they grew up.

You pressed the button at the end of that August, and the world spiralled out of control, with nothing turning out as you thought it might do.

Here you sit, 18 months on, in an emotional desert. Your two eldest children still haven't spoken to you since you left that August. Your wife hasn't talked to you and is taking you through an expensive divorce.

Your extended family and friends have cut you off. A woman you have loved dearly for several months has just dumped you, mainly for reasons of your own fault.

Your job has been really demanding over the past year, involving leading major organisational change. You are basically penniless: there will be no holiday and you are scouring the food-reduction compartments in supermarkets.

You have driven away those people who were closest to you, who made you happy and to whose happiness you thought you contributed substantially.

If you had known in August 2010 what you know now, would you have pressed that button? Well, here's the sting; none of us can ever answer a question like that. We press the button for what we think are the right reasons at the time, and we move forward.

We don't want to hurt people, but people inevitably get hurt. Does this make me, and others like me, a bad person? Maybe, but ultimately we are just human, with all the imperfections that entails. Anonymous